The present invention generally relates to medical diagnostic systems, and in particular relates to distributed software configurations for medical diagnostic systems.
Sophisticated medical diagnostic systems have long been available to doctors. As examples, doctors employ ultrasound imaging systems, X-ray imaging systems, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) on a daily basis as an aid in diagnosing illness, preventing illness, and investigating patient health concerns. As technology has progressed, medial diagnostic systems have increased in capability and complexity, and now operate primarily under control of a sophisticated computer system embedded in the medical diagnostic system.
The computer system is responsible for many tasks. Not only must the computer system operate the diagnostic system hardware itself, but the computer system must also allow access to patient records and archived data (e.g., X-ray images), process reports, perform image processing, track maintenance requests and the like. Thus, the computer system provides a single interface to many important functions necessary to operate the diagnostic system.
In the past, however, medical diagnostic system designers have implemented the computer system as a single integrated system. In other words, a computer system performs the wide variety of tasks required for the diagnostic system to operate. This approach suffers from a number of drawbacks, including, for example, the limited ability to optimize the computer system hardware for each type task the computer system must perform, the limited ability to perform hardware maintenance or software upgrades without taking the entire computer system down, and limited ability to allow multiple doctors, technicians, or support personnel to use different software modules at the same time (e.g., to allow a secretary to run a patient report while allowing a doctor to capture an X-ray image).
A need has long existed in the industry for a distributed software architecture for medical diagnostic systems that overcomes the problems noted above, and others previously experienced.
A preferred embodiment of the present invention provides a distributed medical diagnostic system. The distributed medical diagnostic system may, for example, be implemented using a first computer that executes a first medical diagnostic system software module and a second computer, separate from the first computer, that executes a second medical diagnostic system software module. The first and second medical diagnostic system software modules are members of a system software and hardware set that implements any chosen medical diagnostic system. In other words, the hardware and software that implement a single medical diagnostic system are distributed among several computers. A communication interface is present in both the first computer and in the second computer. The first and second software modules communicate with one another through the communication interfaces.
The medical diagnostic system is preferably an ultrasound system as described in more detail below. However, as additional examples, the medical diagnostic system may also be a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system, an X-ray imaging system, or another type of diagnostic system.
A further embodiment of the present invention provides a method for implementing a distributed medical diagnostic system. The method first separates a system software set for a chosen medical diagnostic system into software modules. Next, the method distributes the software modules among at least first and second separate computers and connects the first and second computers through communication interfaces. In addition, the method preferably connects at least one of the first and second computers to an electromechanical subsystem of the medical diagnostic system.